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Management Practices and Organisational Behaviour

Notes is being reached on how we should handle this problem. One suggestion was to break down the
question of "What is leadership?" into two questions:
1. What characteristics or behaviours make it more likely that an individual will become a
leader?
2. Once someone holds a formal position as a leader, what characteristics make it more or
less likely that he or she will be effective?
The first question is one of the emergence of a leader. The second question sees leadership as
those characteristics or behaviours that make an individual effective in a given position.
Leadership is seen not as some set of universally agreed-upon traits, but as those things which
are positively related to groups' productivity in a given situation. The central idea is that there
is no best style of leadership. What will work best depends on the proper combination of
personal characteristics and the specific situation in which one works. To understand this position
more fully, let us examine the definitions given by authorities on the subject, for leadership is a
great quality and it can create and convert anything. There are many definitions of leadership.
Some of the definitions of leadership are reproduced below:
"Leadership" according to Alford and Beatty "is the ability to secure desirable actions from a
group of followers voluntarily, without the use of coercion."
According to Chester I Barnard, "it (leadership) refers to the quality of the behaviour of the
individual whereby they guide people on their activities in organised efforts".

According to Terry, "A leader shows the way by his own example. He is not a pusher, he pulls
rather than pushes".
According to Koontz and O'Donnell, Managerial leadership is "the ability to exert inter-personal
influence by means of communication, towards the achievement of a goal. Since managers get
things done through people, their success depends, to a considerable extent upon their ability to
provide leadership".
In the words of R. T. Livingston, Leadership is "the ability to awaken in others the desire to
follow a common objective".
According to the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, "Leadership is the relation between an
individual and a group around some common interest and behaving in a manner directed or
determined by him".
According to Peter Drucker, Leadership "is not making friends and influencing people, i.e.,
salesmanship is the lifting of man's vision to higher sights, the raising of man's performance to
higher standards, the building of man's personality beyond its normal limitations".
According to Louis A Allen, "A leader is one who guides and directs other people. He gives the
efforts of his followers a direction and purpose by influencing their behaviour".
In the words of Theo Haimann, "Leadership is the process by which an executive imaginatively
directs, guides and influences the work of others in choosing and attaining specified goals by
mediating between the individuals and the organisation in such a manner that both will obtain
maximum satisfaction".
In the words of James Gibbon, Leadership is "a process of influencing a group in a particular
situation at a given point of time and in a specific set of circumstances that stimulates people to
strive willingly to attain the common objectives and satisfaction with the type of leadership
provided".

According to Katz and Kalm, "In the descriptions of organisations, no word is used with such
varied meanings. The word leadership is sometimes used to indicate that it is an attribute of

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